"In this new drawing show, Alison Pebworth explores American culture through its lost and obscured histories. She reexamines these histories through drawings that mix eras, myths, and historic figures to provoke a deeper curiosity about who we are as Americans."

Alison has been making “street side” projects locally and nationally since 2004 under the rubric of the Roadside Show & Tell, a series of interactive roadside attractions and related projects created in the spirit of the 19th century American traveling road show. In 2006, she traveled crosscountry for eight months developing Looking for Lost America, a research project of the Roadside Show and Tell. This trip was the inspiration for Beautiful Possibility, her forthcoming exhibition and research project that will take Pebworth and her work across the northern United States and Lower Canada in 2010 and 2011. Award-winning author and essayist Rebecca Solnit writes of Pebworth’s work for this project, “In digging deep into the real and mythic histories of race in America, (Pebworth) invites viewers in to contemplate again who we are, how we got here, and who we want to be—timely questions in this time of change.”

The Center for Cultural Innovation has supported the Beautiful Possibility project through a planning grant (2007) and marketing grant (2008). Southern Exposure Gallery in San Francisco will launch the traveling project and Michael Rosenthal Gallery will represent Other Possibilities, new drawings created in support of the Beautiful Possibility Project, to be shown simultaneously in 2010. Other recent awards include an Alternative Exposure Grant, Southern Exposure Gallery (2007) and an Individual Artist Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission (2007). Pebworth was in Ground Scores, Bay Area Now 5, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2008) and also featured in “Hopeless and Otherwise” at Southern Exposure Gallery (2008), “Front and Center” at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2009), and the Signal + Noise Festival at VIVO Media Arts Centre in Vancouver BC (2009). She has held rtist residencies at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, DeYoung and Legion of Honor Museums (2003), The Vermont Studio Center (2006) and The Ucross Foundation in Wyoming (2006). Her work may be viewed at www.roadsideshowandtell.com and www.alisonpebworth.com